LITMIR.BIZ

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too.”

      “I see. So the men who were inside had sure knowledge that you came to the door and saw them?”

      He nodded, his face morose and pensive in that flickering, yellow-orange light.

      “Exactly. At first I thought it was just the security cameras that might have them worried. Us standing outside the door when the bribe came down. But now the sheriff’s missing. And I realize they must know, or at least suspect, that I’ve been building a case against them. They’ve turned my own game against me.”

      “How do you know?”

      His voice was sharp with bitter resentment. “The sheriff was just a good old boy retired from the fed that I knew and liked. We had lunch whenever we both had to go to the courthouse. He had nothing to do with the situation, just the wrong place, wrong time. Now he’s missing.” He stared at her, his eyes dark and sunken in his pain-filled face. “When they realized what we saw they knew it’d be damn hard to off an assistant U.S. Attorney in the middle of an investigation, but Cod—I mean, the sheriff, he was a piece of cake. They made him disappear, then they set about turning all the evidence against me, even that tape. You see, I was carrying a briefcase, too. So it was totally logical to simply suggest that I had come by that day to bribe the judge. Then, seeing he was with someone, I supposedly changed my mind and left without knocking.”

      “But how could they prove such a charge from that tape?” she asked, incredulous.

      “They couldn’t, of course. But the judge swore out a deposition that I tried to bribe him soon after that. So the tape became corroborative evidence, one more nail in my coffin. And believe me, they’ve planted far more incriminating evidence against me since then. The newfound cash in my apartment in Washington was why I had to escape today.”

      He fell silent, evidently exhausted by the effort to tell her all this. Then Constance noticed the fresh bloodstain growing under his leg. His wound was bleeding again.

      Looking at his haggard features, it occurred to her for the first time. He just might not make it.

      It might mean her own salvation. If he died, she could escape.

      But gazing closer into his pain-filmed eyes, she felt a deep sympathy well up inside her. Despite his holding a gun on her, despite everything she’d suffered because of Doug’s treachery, Loudon made her want to believe him. He had an earnestness that was hard to look away from, and his story was related in such a fashion that it didn’t make sense to her he’d use his last strength to tell her lies. There was no purpose to any lies now. She was still his unwilling prisoner.

      However, neither could she forget Hazel’s remark about Doug: Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

      His voice suddenly sliced into her thoughts.

      “Here,” he told her, handing her a black leather wallet.

      The wallet was opened to a photo ID that bore the official seal of the U.S. Justice Department. It identified Quinn Loudon as an assistant U.S. Attorney.

      “I believe who and what you are,” she told him carefully, handing it back.

      “But anyone can turn rotten, right? Is that what you’re implying?”

      “You’re bleeding,” she pointed out, sidestepping his question. But in fact he’d hit the proverbial nail right on the head—“good guys” were not guaranteed by badges and IDs. The headlines proved, every day, that good guys became bad guys for the right price.

      Loudon pulled his shirttails out and ripped off a strip of the material. Quickly he folded it into a makeshift bandage.

      “Turn your head,” he ordered her.

      When she hesitated, he simply shrugged. “Suit yourself, I’m not bashful.”

      When she heard his belt buckle clinking and realized he was lowering his trousers, she did quickly turn away while he tied the cloth around his wound.

      “All right,” he told her a few moments later. “Peep show’s over.”

      “You’ve got to get to a doctor,” she told him. “That wound could infect.”

      “Nix on that. By law doctors have to report every gunshot wound. I’ve already figured out what I need to do first. I’ve got one possible ace in the hole, but I’ll need to drive to Billings if I mean to play it.”

      “That’s a 400-mile drive,” she reminded him. “You’ll never make it.”

      “Probably not,” he agreed. “That’s why you’re going to take me. And we’ll have to use your vehicle. By now mine has to be the object of a state-wide search.”

      “No,” she said. “I’m afraid. I…your story is quite convincing. But it’s only your word. Besides, even if I chose to believe you—this is obviously a very serious situation. I just…I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m just too afraid.”

      “I don’t recall asking you,” he reminded her, and a sinister tone of menace had entered his voice—or so it seemed to her in her fright.

      “I can’t,” she insisted.

      “Yes, you can.”

      “All right then, I won’t.”

      “Actually, it’s best that you refuse. That way you don’t become an accessory or get charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive. It’s this that will force you, and that’s what you’ll tell the authorities later.”

      His hand slipped inside his suit jacket and emerged with the gun. Again he didn’t aim it at her—but he held it in plain view as a reminder.

      “You will drive me to Billings, Miss Adams.” His stare pierced her. “End of discussion.”

      I’m in deep, thought Quinn, and going deeper.

      Despite the long drink in the cabin, the inside of his mouth tasted as dry and stale as the last cracker at the bottom of the barrel. He hadn’t eaten all day, and his pinched stomach felt like it had been pumped.

      Additionally, even the black plastic bag covering the smashed window didn’t entirely keep out the cold. Constance Adams’s Jeep did not ride nearly so smoothly as his Lexus. Each time it bounced over a hole or rut on Old Mill Road, pain exploded in his thigh. But even at its worst, the physical pain was nothing compared to his inner turmoil.

      His criminal actions earlier today, in Kalispell, while certainly censurable could at least be partially defended. They had caught him completely flat-footed, unprepared, and he simply reacted in a panic. After all, his freedom was on the line. He had been fighting the threat of wrongful imprisonment as well as ensuring his ability to disprove the phony charges against him.

      But now…now it was a whole new criminal ball game. He had taken a hostage under the implied threat of violence. Only sheer desperation could have driven him to such an action. “Beyond the pale” hardly described his conduct now.

      The heater was blowing, and he wasn’t shivering now. He opened the passenger’s window to let the cold night air revive him a bit. A sliver of nascent moon hung over the serrated mountain peaks, golden against a blue-black evening sky.

      Constance Adams had said nothing during the ride back down to the valley floor and the interstate highway. Now she finally spoke up.

      “Mr. Loudon? If you really are innocent, as you say, you should easily be able to clear yourself, shouldn’t you? Won’t your actions now just make things needlessly worse for you?”

      “Easily? Believe me, given the men I’m up against, it would be easier to write my name on water.”

      There was so much more to it, he thought in a welter of despair and misery, that she just couldn’t understand from outside the situation. The money planted in his apartment back east, for example. He realized now that this scam involved more players than just Whitaker and Schrader. Others were involved, and there

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